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If you talk with U.S. educators, you'll find them passionate and knowledgeable, with strong opinions about how to teach their students best, yet little flexibil
by markdeloura 8y ago
If you talk with U.S. educators, you'll find them passionate and knowledgeable, with strong opinions about how to teach their students best, yet little flexibility or finances to make any changes. Many of them feel locked in by tight curriculum standards and a need to teach to the test, so the result is to just maintain the status quo. Meanwhile we see many countries around the world pulling ahead in the OECD PISA rankings. Philanthropy can help through pushing and prodding, exploring new techniques, highlighting new research, and funding tests and experiments... and there will be failures as well as successes. But to not strive to improve our education system is irresponsible - generations benefit from each small increase in capability or effectiveness. I for one hope that these organizations continue striving to improve learning for future students. Who else has the resources -- and the will -- to do it?
- maxxxxx 8y agoI think the US needs to learn again to improve exisitng systems. I think philanthropy is often a way to avoid tackling difficult issues and instead trying to score some points quickly without changing the system. Whatever the philanthropy effort come up with is pretty useless or only of use for a few people if the results that don't actually get implemented in the mainstream. When I talk to people in the US most of them seem to think that the current systems are hopeless and can't be improved, be it infrastructure, health or education. Philanthropy can help maybe a little but I think it's more important to improve current systems. You can't just let things for slowly and hope for billionaires to fix them. They won't.